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I do this not because I want to show that I am intellectually superior that the writer. I just want to show, lovingly that a lot of people are holding on to some assumptions, that are risen just because someone do not want to believe. Goes to show how evil a heart can be even when hard evidence is staring right in your face.
Why the Christian God is Impossible
by Chad Docterman
Introduction
Christians consider the existence of their God to be an obvious truth that no sane man could deny. I strongly disagree with this assumption not only because evidence for the existence of this presumably ubiquitous yet invisible God is lacking, but because the very nature Christians attribute to this God is self-contradictory.
Proving a Universal Negative
It is taken for granted by Christians, as well as many atheists, that a universal negative cannot be proven. In this case, that universal negative is the statement that the Christian God does not exist. One would have to have omniscience, they say, in order to prove that anything does not exist. I disagree with this position, however, because omniscience is not needed in order to prove that a thing whose nature is a self-contradiction cannot, and therefore does not exist.
I do not need a complete knowledge of the universe to prove to you that cubic spheres do not exist. Such objects have mutually-exclusive attributes which would render their existence impossible. For example, a cube, by definition, has 8 corners, while a sphere has none. These properties are completely incompatible: they cannot be held simultaneously by the same object. It is my intent to show that the supposed properties of the Christian God Yahweh, like those of a cubic sphere, are incompatible, and by so doing, to show Yahweh's existence to be an impossibility.
Wilson's Answer: The very reason why we can know that a cubic sphere cannot exist is because one can attribute a definition of what a cube is and what a sphere is. Once those definition are made clear can one really conclude that somethings are an impossibility.
Hence this is my rebuttal. How can we define God? Are our minds big enough to really know God enough to define God truly. For one to define God, one has to be bigger than God. Only when one can define God properly, in all His essence can one safely conclude that the reality do not have a being call God. On the contrary, there are many descriptions of God through the Bible and nature shouts His description. Only those who has eyes to enjoy a sunset and yet say that God do not exist is saying His eyes cannot see creation.
A very simple experiment. For you to know that somewhere has been to a place is just to see the evidence of his presence. The evidence is creation. For one to see wind do exist, even when one cannot see it, is to see the evidence of its presence: the moving reed, the rolling winds, the splashing waves...
So do we need to know everything that God exists? No. But it would be harder for someone who do not know everything to say that God don't exists...because the evidence is all around him.
Defining YHWH
Before we can discuss the existence of a thing, we must define it. Christians have endowed their God with all of the following attributes: He is eternal, all-powerful, and created everything. He created all the laws of nature and can change anything by an act of will. He is all-good, all-loving, and perfectly just. He is a personal God who experiences all of the emotions a human does. He is all-knowing. He sees everything past and future.
God's creation was originally perfect, but humans, by disobeying him, brought imperfection into the world. Humans are evil and sinful, and must suffer in this world because of their sinfulness. God gives humans the opportunity to accept forgiveness for their sin, and all who do will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven, but while they are on earth, they must suffer for his sake. All humans who choose not to accept this forgiveness must go to hell and be tormented for eternity.
One Bible verse which Christians are fond of quoting says that atheists are fools. I intend to show that the above concepts of God are completely incompatible and so reveal the impossibility of all of them being true. Who is the fool? The fool is the one who believes impossible things and calls them divine mysteries.
Wilson's Answer: The way I see is that the author is placing all the blame to God for human's problem with sin. What the author do not see, and failed to see is that, God gave the best expression of love by giving something that is being fought all over the world: freedom. God loves us so much He gave us FREEDOM. Unfortunately, FREEDOM means one do have the potential to sin. Despite the fact that through His ominiscene, He still create us so that He can enjoy us for all eternity through Jesus Christ.
All the happiness and sadness that we experience, most of them are caused by our decision making process, our freedom to choose. Why? Because if God is LOVE, then the very very basic ingredient to produce true love is freedom. How can love be real, if one is forced to love someone?
Because of God's wanting to have a loving relationship with us mere mortals, He would rather sacrifice His Son so we can be enjoyed by Him and we in return even though the worst nightmare, sin entered this world, has come true.
Perfection Seeks Even More Perfection
What did God do during that eternity before he created everything? If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely? God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete--it needs nothing else. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing that elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires, and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: I will ask a question. "Why would your parents choose to procreate you in the first place?" Any loving parent, would want this when they have a child is this: a family. And what a family provide? Love and acceptance. Our parents have us so that they can enjoy us, and we as their children can enjoy love.
Then the argument that if God is perfect, then there wouldn't be a need to create human beings in the first place since in perfection, nothing is lacking. It is the same saying that a couple has found each other and they love each other and that is enough.
BUT, does that mean if nothing is lacking, something cannot be better? Of course not. One can always strive for better things in life. And why God, even in his perfection, make a perfect world even more perfect? Simply because He knows it can be better. Why?
Before us human beings, God, being in trinity has the Son and the Holy Spirit. They would have been perfectly pleased in that situation. However fast forward to the New Heaven and a New Earth where multitudes of believers are resurrected, given a new body, all having a lasting relationship with Abba and our Brother, isn't that better than just having God in three essence?
God being all knowing, would simply choose a better scenario: to have more people sharing the good life with Him rather than with Himself. Hence He would rather go through the pain of sin, so that He can have more Sons and Daughters of God.
Perfection Begets Imperfection
But, for the sake of argument, let's continue. Let us suppose that this perfect God did create the universe. Humans were the crown of his creation, since they were created in God's image and have the ability to make decisions. However, these humans spoiled the original perfection by choosing to disobey God.
What!? If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, and yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans. The ultimate source of imperfection is God. What is perfect cannot become imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: The Bible did say ALL creation is Good. And if freedom is given to love, then there is freedom to choose, which by itself is a good thing. But the fact is that the chooser who is good, can choose wrongly as well. A human being can be created good...but a good thing such as free choice, can be a bad thing and Eve choose badly to eat the fruit and Adam choose badly to follow his wife.
And for those who are so against God in order to deny Him using superfluous arguments, these people would be pleased to know that it is God who gave them the power of freedom, to choose not to believe in Him. And they are exactly eating the forbidden fruit.
Is a normal baby perfect? Of course, he/she can eat/sleep/play/giggle...and he/she can also make decision to cry in the middle of the night/create din/cause sleepless nights just because he/she is able to.
The very fact that one can deny God means God is love.
The Freewill Argument
The Christians' objection to this argument involves freewill. They say that a being must have freewill to be happy. The omnibenevolent God did not wish to create robots, so he gave humans freewill to enable them to experience love and happiness. But the humans used this freewill to choose evil, and introduced imperfection into God's originally perfect universe. God had no control over this decision, so the blame for our imperfect universe is on the humans, not God.
Here is why the argument is weak. First, if God is omnipotent, then the assumption that freewill is necessary for happiness is false. If God could make it a rule that only beings with freewill may experience happiness, then he could just as easily have made it a rule that only robots may experience happiness. The latter option is clearly superior, since perfect robots will never make decisions which could render them or their creator unhappy, whereas beings with freewill could. A perfect and omnipotent God who creates beings capable of ruining their own happiness is impossible.
Second, even if we were to allow the necessity of freewill for happiness, God could have created humans with freewill who did not have the ability to choose evil, but to choose between several good options.
Third, God supposedly has freewill, and yet he does not make imperfect decisions. If humans are miniature images of God, our decisions should likewise be perfect. Also, the occupants of heaven, who presumably must have freewill to be happy, will never use that freewill to make imperfect decisions. Why would the originally perfect humans do differently?
The point remains: the presence of imperfections in the universe disproves the supposed perfection of its creator.
Wilson's Answer: The thing is that perfect being should have perfect decisions means only one thing. The perfect being is a robot.
So how would he know if his wife loves him unconditionally? By placing a option for her to hate him with no reasons whatsoever. Note: the author uses happiness as the reason for freewill. But I would argue this that God allows freewill so that LOVE can be tested and true LOVE will create joy and not happiness, where JOY is a greater emotional wellbeing than happiness.
That is what God is doing too. He may know who will hate Him in the future but that doesn't stop Him from creating humans that will love Him too. I believe that God will know that the new body given to us, will keep us from sin also because the blood of Jesus...that's why the author will never understand why the new perfect beings being promised will make perfect decisions.
This Bible verse will provide that answer "God will make all things work for good for those who loves Him." All things, and that includes bad decisions.
All-good God Knowingly Creates Future Suffering
God is omniscient. When he created the universe, he saw the sufferings which humans would endure as a result of the sin of those original humans. He heard the screams of the damned. Surely he would have known that it would have been better for those humans to never have been born (in fact, the Bible says this very thing), and surely this all-compassionate deity would have foregone the creation of a universe destined to imperfection in which many of the humans were doomed to eternal suffering. A perfectly compassionate being who creates beings which he knows are doomed to suffer is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: God also say that it is not His will to see people perish. But if are to look at the good side, that there will be more who will be enjoying the fruits of Heaven, I guess the greater good wins and all thanks to Jesus Sacrifice.
Infinite Punishment for Finite Sins
God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins. Clearly, a limited offense does not warrant unlimited punishment. God's sentencing of the imperfect humans to an eternity in hell for a mere mortal lifetime of sin is infinitely more unjust than this punishment. The absurd injustice of this infinite punishment is even greater when we consider that the ultimate source of human imperfection is the God who created them. A perfectly just God who sentences his imperfect creation to infinite punishment for finite sins is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: The fact is that sins are infinite. We are using human perception of justice on God's definition of justice. The thing that sins DO affect future generations. Like war...one war is all it takes for a country to suffer for many generations to come.
To say that God's justice is absurd do not know the true value of true justice until one is really wronged. And it is also because of LOVE, that God needs to be judge. So many times in our lives, we are being backstabbed, lied to, complained about, gossip with and taken advantaged off that God needs to judge those people who wronged us because HE loves us.
If we say God is unfair since He is punishing people because it was He who created the imperfect humans in the first place, then where is the justice if Jesus who has helped millions died on the cross? God is really unfair to His own Son if that's the case. But it is only by ONE's redemptive work that allows the sin of one to be wiped out from those who believed in HIM. Isn't that even more unfair? Why would the author argues one point that God has effectively shown the most unfair decision to send his SON to die so that we may live?
God is unfair...He is unfairly good!
Belief More Important Than Action
Consider all of the people who live in the remote regions of the world who have never even heard the "gospel" of Jesus Christ. Consider the people who have naturally adhered to the religion of their parents and nation as they had been taught to do since birth. If we are to believe the Christians, all of these people will perish in the eternal fire for not believing in Jesus. It does not matter how just, kind, and generous they have been with their fellow humans during their lifetime: if they do not accept the gospel of Jesus, they are condemned. No just God would ever judge a man by his beliefs rather than his actions.
Wilson's Answer: I wonder if the author has belief in anything. Like belief in the science of aerodynamics that enables him to sit on a plane and travel through the air. One do not need any actions to have belief in order to act.
The thing is that the author also understands that all do sin and believed that God is unjust by sending his creation to a world to sin so that he can punish them. This belief of an unjust God will lead to only one thing...an action to deny Him.
So for God to judge his beliefs is perfectly just because it is through beliefs that one's motivation is made clear and that motivation will lead to his actions: Just as he did in his article refuting God. He refutes because he believes in the non existence.
If belief is so strong and powerful, why is it tough to understand that a belief in Jesus as saviour would bring about salvation?
Perfection's Imperfect Revelation
The Bible is supposedly God's perfect Word. It contains instructions to humankind for avoiding the eternal fires of hell. How wonderful and kind of this God to provide us with this means of overcoming the problems for which he is ultimately responsible! The all-powerful God could have, by a mere act of will, eliminated all of the problems we humans must endure, but instead, in his infinite wisdom, he has opted to offer this indecipherable amalgam of books which is the Bible as a means for avoiding the hell which he has prepared for us. The perfect God has decided to reveal his wishes in this imperfect work, written in the imperfect language of imperfect man, translated, copied, interpreted, voted on, and related by imperfect man.
No two men will ever agree what this perfect word of God is supposed to mean, since much of it is either self- contradictory, or obscured by enigmatic symbols. And yet the perfect God expects us imperfect humans to understand this paradoxical riddle using the imperfect minds with which he has equipped us. Surely the all-wise and all-powerful God would have known that it would have been better to reveal his perfect will directly to each of us, rather than to allow it to be debased and perverted by the imperfect language and botched interpretations of man.
Wilson's Answer: Through imperfect men, through imperfect language and yet the message has not changed throughout the years. Isn't that direct enough?
Contradictory Justice
One need look to no source other than the Bible to discover its imperfections, for it contradicts itself and thus exposes its own imperfection. It contradicts itself on matters of justice, for the same just God who assures his people that sons shall not be punished for the sins of their fathers turns around and destroys an entire household for the sin of one man (he had stolen some of Yahweh's war loot). It was this same Yahweh who afflicted thousands of his innocent people with plague and death to punish their evil king David for taking a census (?!). It was this same Yahweh who allowed the humans to slaughter his son because the perfect Yahweh had botched his own creation. Consider how many have been stoned, burned, slaughtered, raped, and enslaved because of Yahweh's skewed sense of justice. The blood of innocent babies is on the perfect, just, compassionate hands of Yahweh.
Wilson Answer: Punishing a people for one's bad action is certainly unjust. Then consider that one good action of Christ have saved billions...that is unjust as well and yet we never complained and never appreciate God's goodness. If one can use one measurement against God's badness, then why we accept Jesus gift if it is unjust?
The thing is God has allowed ONE death to save zillions. It may be skewed justice too but it is a skewed justice for a great good. Now argue against that. God don't ask a lot...he just want you to accept Jesus so that this unjust gift can be given to you...free of charge.
Contradictory History
The Bible contradicts itself on matters of history. A person who reads and compares the contents of the Bible will be confused about exactly who Esau's wives were, whether Timnah was a concubine or a son, and whether Jesus' earthly lineage is through Solomon or his brother Nathan. These are but a few of hundreds of documented historical contradictions. If the Bible cannot confirm itself in mundane earthly matters, how are we to trust it on moral and spiritual matters?
Wilson Answer: Fact is that it was never in doubt. One name in a lineage doesn't mean the same person with the same name in another lineage.
Unfulfilled Prophecy
The Bible misinterprets its own prophecies. Read Isaiah 7 and compare it to Matthew 1 to find but one of many misinterpreted prophecies of which Christians are either passively or willfully ignorant. The fulfillment of prophecy in the Bible is cited as proof of its divine inspiration, and yet here is but one major example of a prophecy whose intended meaning has been and continues to be twisted to support subsequent absurd and false doctrines. There are no ends to which the credulous will not go to support their feeble beliefs in the face of compelling evidence against them.
The Bible is imperfect. It only takes one imperfection to destroy the supposed perfection of this alleged Word of God. Many have been found. A perfect God who reveals his perfect will in an imperfect book is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: One should only look at one prophecy: The jews and the formation of the state of Israel to know that God's word about our future is foretold accurately. It has happened, as it has happened with prophecies about Jesus. And prophecies about the end times will also come, just as predicted by the Bible.
The Omniscient Changes the Future
A God who knows the future is powerless to change it. An omniscient God who is all-powerful and freewilled is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: ... and for a good reason...He loves us enough to give us freewill.
The Omniscient is Surprised
A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions as a result of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may emotively react.
We humans experience anger and frustration when something is wrong which we cannot fix. The perfect, omnipotent God, however, can fix anything. Humans experience longing for things we lack. The perfect God lacks nothing. An omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect God who experiences emotion is impossible.
Wilson's Answer: Is God surprised? if He is, then He won't give us prophecy. I may know that my wife is unfaithful but that does not mean that I cannot be pained by the infidelity. This is a moot point iMHO.
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